Film documents bid to ‘stand up to the experts’ on evolution

The movie opens with the iconic image of the Texas State Capitol, and then you are quickly taken to a seat in the Senate Chamber next to controversial State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy — with the voice of a senator (Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso) grilling McLeroy about stirring up a “hornet’s nest” because of his strong beliefs about Creationism and Christianity.

Nothing wrong with those beliefs, unless, of course, you want to dilute the teaching of evolution on Texas public schools. The film documentary “The Revisionaries” opened in Austin this weekend. It’s an attempt to personalize the State Board of Education while exploring the efforts of McLeroy and other social conservative members to influence the public textbooks that teach science and history.

Don McLeroy

McLeroy establishes his worldview early in the film: “Every child is created in the image of God.” Later, he sings, “The Bible tells me so.”

“Isn’t that a cool song?” he asks.

Documentary filmmaker Scott Thurman follows the perpetually cheerful Bryan dentist from the State Board of Education board room to his home, to his office, to his Sunday school class and even to lunch at the home of one of his biggest critics: Southern Methodist University anthropologist and Professor Ron Wetherington.

The film portrays McLeroy in a sympathetic way while also underscoring the uncomfortable notion that political and religious ideology plays a far greater role in the establishment of public school curriculum standards than most folks realize.

“Ignorance and arrogance is a flammable mixture,” the SMU anthropologist says of the board’s heavy handed approach in shaping those public school standards. In the end, compromises landed “in the Creationists’ direction,” one of the scientific experts laments.

But someone “has to stand up to the experts,” McLeroy asserts several times during the film. “Science doesn’t deserve the plateau it’s put on.”

McLeroy’s pitch job is not always an easy one – not even with easy audiences. For example, he asks his Sunday school class: “Were dinosaurs on the ark?”

The children respond with a chorus of “No!”

“Sure they were,” McLeroy tells them.

Origin of life questions always pit science against religious faith.

SMU Professor Ron Wetherington

“The evolutionary science, of which I participate, never asks the question about the origin of life, mainly because we simply don’t know,” Wetherington says in the documentary. “And trying to guess the answer is like trying to write a fairy tale. And so, when people ask me to explain the origin of life, I simply say, ‘I don’t know. How do you explain it?’”

In the film, textbook publishers explain how Texas textbooks, because of the large market they create, set the standard for the country.

That’s why the documentary is important, says Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors the State Board of Education from a more liberal perspective.

“We’re hoping that the word about the State Board of Education gets out beyond Texas,” Miller said of the documentary and a favorable review in the New York Times.

From that New York Times review of “The Revisionaries”: “More startling was the casual way the board injected opinion into social studies textbooks, requiring, among many other additions, references to Ronald Reagan’s leadership in “restoring national confidence” and replacing hip-hop with country in a citation of pop music.

“Interviewing a wide range of concerned parties, Mr. Thurman’s presentation is admirably evenhanded; though he clearly supports the scientists, for example, he avoids the temptation to ridicule the commissioners. Instead, they open up and explain their perspectives. “Someone has to stand up to the experts,” Dr. McLeroy says.”

Film Director Scott Thurman

It’s a line that provoked hoots and laughter from the audience.

During a question and answer session with the audience, Miller from the Texas Freedom Network, pushed the view that “we need to listen to our experts as opposed to standing up to them.”

The film director sees his work as a mixture “of medicine and sugar.” Thurman reminded his audience that making a documentary film about the board of education is inherently difficult. It’s important (the medicine part of the story) but sometimes weighty and dry